A bike safety initiative kicked off back in March within the City of Portland’s Bureau of Maintenance is starting to manifest on the streets.

A closer look.

While pedaling home the other day, I spotted a side underrun guard installed on a large tanker truck.

The guards are meant to help prevent someone on a bicycle from being swept beneath a truck in the event of a “right-hook” collision (there is no guard on the left-hand side). Safety is also improved by the bright yellow striping and green stickers (with white bike symbol) on the guards that reads, “Do you see me? Can I see you?”

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Jason, I don\’t have the citation, but I seem to remember reading that the bashguards have reduced pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in the UK (they combine the 2 groups there) by about 40% in collisions with such trucks. I could be wrong about the exact number, however.

I believe PDOT\’s thought was that the UK\’s numbers were good enough for them to justify putting them on the city trucks. I am quite sure they will be tracking data and so we will have the first North American numbers. From a taxpayer\’s perspective, this does not seem like a radical idea to me.

[…] is reporting that “underrun” truck guards like the one above have been installed on certain…. Two cyclists were killed last year in “right-hook” accidents, and the Portland city […]

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AmberJune 30, 2008 at 11:10 pm

Kronda,
Cool that you got to sit in a maintenance truck. My hubby bike commutes and drives trucks/buses for his job. The visibility can be pretty crappy, especially right next to the truck. Good to know where the blind spots are.
I like the \”Can you see me, Can I see you\” sign. Good reminder about eye contact and visibility. It\’s great the city is trying something, even if it hasn\’t been \”proved\” yet.

I\’m skeptical. I think the money could be better spent on better bike facilities / training / etc. rather than weighing down trucks. In fact, why not have better regulations to keep trucks off city streets without certain permits of necessity and then limit their speed to 10mph within certain zones. I may be wrong but I doubt this is worth the bang for the bucks. I\’d also be curious about fuel economy issues… although, that will likely get me called out on a fuel vs. life comparison…

I like this idea very much. It seems to accomplish three tasks. (1) it deals with the conflict between truck and bike, giving honor and credibility to the concerns that hare arisen as of late, (2) it provides a solution to be tried, and, most notably, (3) it has signage on it that also reminds the biker of the caution of which he or she must aware when biking in an urban setting.

Ummm .. one problem. The under run guard needs to run OUTBOARD of the wheels. That guard placement allows a cyclist/pedestrian/motor vehicle to get into the path of the rear wheels before stopping them from proceding further. In recent history in Toronto it has been the rear wheels rolling over the victim that caused the bulk of the trauma.

Well I\’ll be. An easy, logical, life-saving solution to something that has plagued cyclists (and motorists) for some time. I\’ve had friends driving the I-5 to California have logging trucks merge lanes right over their thankfully small cars, and that has got to be one of the scariest things to happen ever.

I\’m skeptical. I think the money could be better spent on better bike facilities / training / etc. rather than weighing down trucks. In fact, why not have better regulations to keep trucks off city streets without certain permits of necessity and then limit their speed to 10mph within certain zones.

As these bash guards also save pedestrian lives, what kind of training do you have in mind for them? For that matter, how does one target pedestrians for \”training\”? Regulations restricting truck speeds and when they can be on the roads are a fantastic idea. I wish you all the luck in the world convincing the trucking industry to support it and not spend 10x as much money opposing such ordinances as the actual cost of the bash guards themselves.

You have to be kidding me. Depending on sideguards to keep cyclists out from under trucks is like depending on bear spray to be safe from bears. One should never pass a truck on the right, in the driver’s blind spot, going into an intersection. Right hooks are a combination of bad design and bad choices by the bicyclist.

The front of the truck is also a hazard to vulnerable road users. It is a shame that the side guards promoted by cities deliberately fail to protect cars and even exclude them from the definition of side underride, that is a lot of support for guards that could be available. Comments are now open for the NHTSA rear guard rulemaking and the side guard rulemaking will occur in a few months. http://www.underridenetwork.org/why-front-underride-or-underrun-is-important/ .

I’ve never understood why tiger striping is used so often to mark things you don’t want to hit.

The function of actual tiger stripes is to break up the outline of the cat to make them harder to see. I personally find it visually distracting and often think about that as I pass the supports that hold up some bridges over Columbia Blvd. Plain colors with some reflective accents strike me a much better way to go.

Contrasting colors I believe are meant to be a compromise between night-time and daytime effectiveness. We know from Canadian research that white tape alone is far more visible than the currently used red and white stipes. The red color is meant to give some contrast or visibility during daytime. Red is problematic at night as it offers poor candle-power unlike white or flourescent colors. There is also a problem of everything on the roadways being red which causes an effect called red-dot confusion, you can actually follow the red thinking you are in the wrong lane. Red at one time was considered a hazard color, it has long since been replaced by flourescent yellow-green and similar brighter and far more effective colors. Red and white tape was already used on a majority of trucks on the road so the Clinton Administration over our and Advocates for Safe Highways objections made red and white taope law for trucks, bad for safety but good for campaign donations. Bike riders need to understand color candle-power for clothing and reflectors etc., even light road film can decrease candle-power by 90%. Clean your reflectors for night riding, choose bright flourescent colors for reflective clothing. Tiger stripes equal old school, single color flourescents far more effective!